A sprawling trove of documents tied to Jeffrey Epstein is set to be released after federal officials acknowledged that tens of thousands of other files quietly vanished from an earlier dump.
The missing materials were referenced in the tranche of records released earlier this year, but were withheld temporarily while officials reviewed them for sensitive material. Some of the files are believed to contain unverified allegations involving President Donald Trump, including FBI notes from interviews conducted in 2019 with a woman who accused Epstein of abuse and also made allegations involving Trump.
According to documents already released, federal officials summarized the woman’s claim that Epstein introduced her to Trump and that she alleged the future president assaulted her during an encounter when she was a minor in the early 1980s. Trump has denied the allegations, and the FBI did not assess the credibility of her claim.
A mere mention in the files does not indicate criminality, and Trump has long denied any wrongdoing. A White House spokesperson told the Daily Beast: “Just as President Trump has said, he’s been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein.
“And by releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and calling for more investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him.”
This week, the Department of Justice said thousands of files linked to Epstein were taken offline for additional review after outside analysis found 47,635 were missing from the document release carried out under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Officials now say the files should be ready to be published again by the end of the week, according to the Daily Mail. “47,635 files were offline for further review and should be ready for re-production by the end of the week,” a spokesperson for the Justice Department said.
The renewed disclosure comes after an analysis by The Wall Street Journal and CBS found that the files appeared to be missing from the initial batch of Epstein-related documents made public.
The department has also warned that some records in the Epstein archive include submissions from members of the public that may contain fabricated or unreliable claims. Officials previously noted that some of those materials could include “untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump.”
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has overseen the document release, has repeatedly rejected suggestions that the department withheld records to shield public figures.
“I can assure that we complied with the statute, that we did not protect President Trump,” Blanche said during a news conference earlier this year. “We didn’t protect or not protect anybody.”
The Epstein Files Transparency Act requires the Justice Department to publish most records connected to the criminal cases against Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. The law allows the department to withhold documents only if they are duplicates, protected by attorney-client privilege, tied to an ongoing investigation, or unrelated to the cases.
The statute specifically bars the government from withholding documents simply because they could prove embarrassing to public officials.
A Justice Department spokesperson said that if any records were incorrectly withheld during the review process, the department would publish them “consistent with the law.”
